Staff protests

Both men are believed to have received large pay-offs after being investigated over the claims. Neither now works for Google.

Both Mr Rubin and Mr Singhal have denied the allegations.

The way Google handled the incidents prompted demonstrations by staff and led to thousands walking out of their offices in co-ordinated protests in November.

In response, Google boss Sundar Pichai apologised for the way it had acted in the past over allegations of inappropriate behaviour and promised improvements.

One lawsuit claims that Google operated a two-tier policy when handling reports of harassment or discrimination.

Ordinary workers were typically fired and gained no benefits, but similar behaviour by high-level executives would be tolerated until managers were exposed, at which point they were paid off and allowed to resign, allege legal papers.

The double standard meant Alphabet’s board had not done its job properly and its actions had cost the company millions, said the lawsuit.

Mr Pichai’s statement to staff last October said: “Over the past two years, we have terminated 48 people, including 13 senior managers and above for sexual harassment. None of these people received an exit package.

“And to clarify: in that time, we have also not provided any exit packages to executives who departed voluntarily in the course of a sexual harassment investigation.”

Frank Bottini, an attorney representing one shareholder, said the lawsuit wanted to prompt action at the highest level in Alphabet.

“We’d like to see … meaningful change in the tone at the company, the policies, the treatment of women, the reporting of sexual harassment and other issues,” he told Reuters.

Related Articles

[ad_1] BBC Click’s LJ Rich looks at some of the week’s best technology stories including: Acer unveils its new gaming cockpit, the Predator Thronos, at Berlin’s Ifa technology show Bang and Olufsen reveal a smart speaker which you can roll to control the volume Jaguar Land Rover puts “virtual eyes” on self-driving pods as part […]

[ad_1] A flying robot inspired by how insects achieve flight has been developed by the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The manually controlled DelFly has sensors and cameras on board to help it detect obstacles and there are plans to make it fully autonomous. The robot is currently being used to study insects, but […]

[ad_1] Image copyright EA Image caption Battlefield 3 was one game made unplayable by the attacks A US man accused of knocking game servers offline in a series of attacks has pleaded guilty to charges of computer hacking. Sony, EA Origin and Steam were all hit by Utah resident Austin Thompson’s attacks in 2013 and […]